Biblical Creation vs. Evolution

[Soldier4Christ]

FLIES PRE-PROGRAMMED FOR FRUIT, reported by ABC News in Science, 24 April
2007. The Tahitian Noni shrub has a fruit that smells so bad  it has been
nicknamed "vomit fruit". The fruit produces both hexanoic and octanoic acids,
which not only puts people off, but repels most insects. However, one species of
fruit fly, named "Drosophila sechellia," is attracted to the fruit, where it
feeds and lays it eggs. Japanese scientists have studied the genes that
determine the fly's sense of smell and found two genes that are different to
corresponding genes in other fruit flies. To test the theory that these genes
made the fruit attractive to such flies, they replaced the olfactory genes in a
different species of fly with those "D. sechellia". The genetically modified
flies were attracted to the fruit.  Takashi Matsuo, one of the scientists
involved in the study commented, "We found, for the first time, the genes that
determine the insects' preference [for] their host plants."

ED. COM. These findings are a challenge to the theory that insects and plants
co-evolved, particularly when we have just proved that insects will be attracted
to whatever smell we have creatively implanted a smell gene for. Shades of
designer gene creation don't you think?

[Soldier4Christ]

UNDERWATER  DINO TRACKS FOUND, according to reports in ScienceNOW, BBC News
Online, 24 May 2007, and ABC (Australia) News in Science and New Scientist News,
25 May 2007. A team of Spanish and French palaeontologists have found a series
of dinosaur toe prints preserved in sandstone in the Cameros Basin in northern
Spain. The track consists of twelve sets of imprints, each consisting of two or
three S-shaped impressions consistent with the toes of a theropod dinosaur - two
legged like T rex. The rock also has well preserved current ripple marks, which
a sedimentologist on the team claimed were made by flowing water 3.2 metres
deep.  The toe marks were on average 15 cm wide and 50 cm long. The creature
that made them had a stride of about 2.5 metres and had its legs spread about
44cm apart. These findings indicate the imprints were made by a large dinosaur
battling its way against a strong current. Palaeontologist David Fastovsky of
the University of Rhode Island commented the dinosaur was not swimming, since
its toes were touching the ground, although he believes they could swim in
deeper water if they had to.

ED. COM. The fact that both the tracks and ripple marks were preserved means
they were rapidly buried by another layer of sediment before they eroded. This
combined with the picture of large dinosaur struggling against deep fast flowing
water should make people think of a flood current, not slow gradual processes.
Noah's flood would have caused just this.

[Soldier4Christ]

WALKING WITH ORANGUTANS described in news@nature, ScienceNOW, BBC News Online
and New Scientist News, 31 May 2007. A group of British scientists have spent a
year observing the way orangutans move around the trees of Gunung Leuser
National Park in Sumatra, Indonesia. The researchers observed that orangutans
walk on all fours when on large branches with a diameter of more the 20cm, but
on thinner braches they walk upright using their arms to support their weight by
grasping other branches. When moving about like this they straightened their
legs at the knees and hips in a similar way to humans. The ability to move over
thinner branches like this makes it easier to move from tree to tree and to find
fruit, which is usually found on the ends of thinner branches. Robin Crompton of
the University of Liverpool, UK who took part in the study commented, "Walking
upright and balancing themselves by holding branches with their hands is an
effective way of moving on smaller branches. It helps explain how early human
ancestors learnt to walk upright while living in trees, and how they would have
used this way of moving when they left the trees for a life on the ground."
Orangutans are believed to be the most distant from humans on the Great Ape
evolutionary tree, but apes that are closer to us, i.e. chimps and gorillas,
cannot walk with their legs extended. The British researchers suggest that
humans and orangutans inherited the ability to walk upright from a tree-dwelling
common ancestor of all apes and humans, and chimps and gorillas lost it.
Crompton said to New Scientist there is fossil evidence suggesting bipedalism
(upright two legged walking) evolved earlier than previously believed and it
would explain why "the orangutan is the only ape with a knee joint similar to
that of humans." Not all scientists agree with this theory. Anthropologist
Daniel Lieberman of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts commented to
news@nature, "This is a good argument for why upright posture would be selected
for in trees," but he goes on to say  "Unless knuckle-walking evolved
independently in both the chimpanzee and gorilla lineages, the evolution of
bipedalism from an orang-like form of arboreal assisted bipedalism seems
unlikely".

ED. COM. The fact that orangutans can walk upright in trees means nothing more
than they are well designed to live in forests, climb and walk in trees where
their long arms prevent falling as they safely pluck fruit. Human beings are
well designed to walk on the ground, having short arms so they easily fall out
of trees and therefore don't walk on thin branches to find food. Any who try are
naturally selected against and eliminated from the population. The idea that
humans inherited upright walking from a common ancestor to orangutans is blind
faith as no-one has seen any other creature evolve to or from an organutan or a
human being.

[Soldier4Christ]

ADOPT AN APE AS A CHILD CLAIMS U.N. GROUP, according to an article BBC News
Magazine Online, 29 Mar 2007 and news@nature 26 April 2007. An Austrian court
has rejected a claim by British woman Paula Stibbe to be granted legal
guardianship of a chimpanzee.  She believes the chimp deserves the same
protection as a human child. The outcome of the case depended on whether great
apes deserved human rights, and was backed by a UN organisation named the "Great
Ape Survival Project". Ian Redmond of this organisation claims, "Apes are
special because they are so closely related to us. Chimpanzees and Bonobos are
our joint closest living relatives, differing by only one per cent of DNA - so
close we could accept a blood transfusion or a kidney. Gorillas are next, then
Orang-utans." However, his strongest reason for giving apes such recognition is
that they are capable of mirror self awareness, i.e. they recognise themselves
in a mirror. Redmond commented, "This self-awareness surely suggests that they
know they exist." Apes are also highly social and have similar lifespans.

Zoologist Charlotte Uhlenbroek, who also believed apes deserve special legal
rights commented, "If I was an alien from Mars and looked at human society and a
society of apes then in terms of the emotional life I would see no distinct
difference, although we live very different lives because of language and
technology." However, UK Biology Professor Steve Jones disagrees with the idea
of human rights for any animals. He commented, "Where do you stop?  It seems to
be that being human is unique and nothing to do with biology. Say that apes
share 98% of human DNA and therefore should have 98% of human rights.  Well,
mice share 90% of human DNA. Should they get 90% of human rights? And plants
have more DNA than humans. Rights and responsibilities go together and I've yet
to see a chimp imprisoned for stealing a banana because they don't have a moral
sense of what's right and wrong."

ED. COM. For once, Steve Jones has said something we agree with - being human is
unique and not just in the biology of the body. But Steve Jones does not really
understand why human beings are so unique. It is because we are made in the
image of God, and that is where our sense of morality comes from. It is also the
source of the language and technology that Charlotte Uhlenbroek admits is unique
to humans. We speak and write because we are made in the image of the God who
speaks. That's why He calls himself "The Word" (see John 1:1) and we are
creative in our use of the resources of the earth because we are made in the
image of the One who created all things. However, as long as the theory of
evolution is used to deceive people into believing that human beings are just
animals, there are certain to be more legal cases and constitutional challenges
that try to promote animals to the levels of equality with humans. Elephants and
dolphins also show evidence of mirror image awareness. Will the next step be gay
rights for pink  elephants?

[Soldier4Christ]

WOLLEMI PINES UNIQUE PLUMBING reported in Annals of Botany, vol 99, p609,
April 2007 and Charles Sturt University News, 1 Feb 2007. The Wollemi pine tree
has a distinctive umbrella shape because the branches from the trunk do not form
secondary branches. Its leaves grow directly out of the main branches and the
tree regularly sheds whole branches rather than dropping individual leaves.
Scientists at Charles Sturt University have studied the microscopic structure of
the tree and found that a unique structure in its water conveying system gives
it the distinctive shape and explains why the tree cleanly drops whole branches.
At the base of each branch there is a tight constriction in the water channels
going into the branches. This makes the branches much easier to shed.
Scientists argue this may appear to be a disadvantage as it limits the amount of
water flowing into a branch, but it would not have been a problem in a warm
moist environment with higher carbon dioxide levels. The scientists suggest that
the constriction could explain why the tree has almost died out as Australia has
become hotter and drier.

ED. COM. The Wollemi pine is proving very useful as evidence for the truth that
God created plants "after their own kind (Gen 1:11). When first found it was
proclaimed a living fossil, i.e. its fossils are the same as its living
specimens and are therefore evidence it has reproduced after its kind. The fact
that the tree has a unique plumbing system and branch structure reinforces the
evidence that the wollemi was created as a separate kind of tree.  Finally, the
suggestion that the tree is suited for warm, moist environment with more carbon
dioxide fits with the Biblical description of the world being "very good, with
an atmosphere that had just the right amount of water and carbon dioxide in it
to promote good tree growth. Experiments with plants tell us that a higher
moisture and carbon dioxide levels suits plants better than our current
atmosphere."

[Soldier4Christ]

PRIMEVAL SOUP RE-BREWED, as reported in Scientific American, 28 March 2007.
Jeffrey Bada of Scripps Institute of Oceanography, California, has revisited the
famous "origin of life" experiment made famous by Stanley Miller 1953. Miller's
experiment produced amino acids, which are essential building blocks for living
cells, by exposing a mixture of methane and ammonia to a regular source of
electric sparks. This was meant to be a simulation of earth's primitive
atmosphere in order to test the theory that organic molecules can arise
spontaneously from chemical reactions produced by lightening strikes through an
atmosphere of simple molecules.

Over the years scientists changed their minds about the composition of earth's
early atmosphere and by 1983 had decided that it was a mix of carbon dioxide and
nitrogen, rather than methane and ammonia. Miller did the experiment again in
1983 using this combination of gases, but produced hardly any amino acids. Bada
has found this version of the experiment produced nitrites, chemicals that
destroy amino acids as soon as they form and turn the water acidic, further
inhibiting the formation of amino acids. Bada proposed that the primeval earth
would have contained iron and carbonate minerals, which would have neutralised
the nitrites. He has now carried out the experiment again with chemicals that
neutralise nitrites and produced amino acids. Bada's results have added to an
ongoing debate over whether life arose from chemicals that arose on earth alone
or were chemicals from meteors and comets necessary to get life started.
Christopher Chyba, an astrobiologist at Princeton University commented, "That
would be a terrific result for understanding the origin of life, and for
understanding the prospects for life elsewhere."

ED. COM. It is interesting that school textbooks always describe the 1953
version of Miller's experiment, even though scientists have long ceased
believing in Miller's original ingredients as a model of the original earth
atmosphere. Bada may have produced amino acids with his new brew, but he has the
same problem that Miller had with the original brew. Each amino acid comes in
two shapes that are chemically the same but different in structure, in the same
way right and left hands are mirror images of one another. The amino acids in
living cells are all left handed. Chance random chemical processes, such as
occur in primeval soup experiments, always produce a mixture of right and left
handed amino acids. The only known ways of producing pure left handed amino
acids involve creative manipulation of the system, i.e. intelligent design.
Furthermore, if you leave a solution of pure amino acids to chance random
processes it will slowly but surely change into a mixture of right and left
handed molecules.  This process is called amino acid racemisation and occurs
after living things die. Miller and Bada have only produced the molecules of
death and have done nothing to explain the origin of life.

[Soldier4Christ]

SEAHORSES are normally found in marine environments but are they capable, or
have they ever been capable of living in freshwater? A number of species are
found in estuaries and can tolerate wide fluctuations in salinity, at least for
short periods of time. In Tasmania, the Potbelly Seahorse inhabits the Tamar
River estuary which, during flooding, can drop in salinity from normal seawater
at 34ppt down to 18ppt. Seahorses are similar to and believed to be closely
related to pipefishes of which there are a number of species that live
completely in freshwater rivers around the world. Seahorse expert and
evolutionist, Rudie Kuiter said: "The presently suggested relationships with the
other families [pipefishes, seahorses, seadragons and pipehorses] may seem
questionable when only looking at recent species. Such relationships become
clearer when fossils are included in the studies of the families, as these are
more primitive and less modified than recent species..Some extinct forms
represented links between different living groups."(Ref Kuiter R (2003)
Seahorses, Pipefishes and their relatives p5. TMC Publishing)

ED.COM. From a creationist point of view, it is clear that the original created
seahorse/pipefish kind had the genetic capacity to handle a range of salinities.
After the flood, seahorses/pipefish continued to reproduce after their own kind,
just as God made them to. They diversified and specialised into different
environments, some in freshwater and others in marine environments as the oceans
increased in salinity. It seems the seahorse LOST the capacity to live in
freshwater like its ancestors though several species, like the Tasmanian one,
maintain a partial tolerance.

[Soldier4Christ]

 Calibrating the Flood?
by William Hoesch, M.S.*

Rocks exposed in the walls of Grand Canyon testify of the advance of marine waters upon North America during the Flood. How rapid was the advance? What was it like? We may never fully know the answers but there are few places on earth that are better suited for study. It is of profound importance to Christians to defend the historicity of the Flood; after all, our Lord predicated His Second Coming on it (Matthew 24:38-39). Could it be that the sequence of layers in Grand Canyon known as the Tonto Group exist for the purpose of being a "memorial" (Joshua 4) or a "witness" (Joshua 24) to the world that God has judged in the past and will again?

Secular geologists agree that the Tonto Group of strata, including the Tapeats Sandstone, the Bright Angel Shale, and the Muav Limestone, is perhaps the best example of a marine transgression on North America. However, it was a very unusual advance. It was unusual in at least three ways.

First, it is nearly imaginable to postulate an ocean on top of a continent for geophysical reasons. No continents are underwater today for the simple reason that continental crust is composed of lighter minerals than oceanic crust. This buoyancy causes continents to sit high in the mantle compared to the more dense ocean basins. Geologists must be able to imagine a world very unlike today's, in which either entire continental masses become depressed or else global sea level somehow rose. Neither isostosy nor glacial melt waters are of sufficient scale to explain it.

A second way this marine transgression is unusual is the flatness of the marine advance. Standard interpretation envisions the Tapeats Sandstone as representing a kind of beach or nearshore deposit, the Bright Angel Shale as shallow-water, and the Muav Limestone as a "deeper" water carbonate bank. It is hard to imagine wading into an ocean for hundreds of miles and still be only waist-deep in water, yet this is the picture most secular geologists work with. Thirty-foot boulders in the base of the Tapeats Sandstone do not fit easily into such a picture.

The third way this is unusual is that the Tonto Group has not been dated by any absolute means. That is, there are no igneous rock bodies within the Tonto Group by which scientists can assign with certainty an "age," even though most will assert it to be 500 plus million years old. How can they have such confidence? Marine fossils of the Tonto Group define "bio-zones" that are found in similar rocks in other parts of the world where dateable igneous rocks are inter-bedded with Tonto-like sedimentary rocks. The bio-zones are thought to represent nearly-synchronous worldwide evolutionary "events," and a single radioisotope date from anywhere in the world is considered sufficient to date the entire horizon. There is only one kind of timeline that stratigraphers universally recognize that can trump evolutionary bio-zones, and that is a volcanic ash bed (tuff).

Newsflash! There is now evidence for more than one volcanic ash bed in the Tonto Group of Grand Canyon. An ICR FAST research project is pursuing these ash beds as a means to understand the advance of the oceans on top of the continent, without appeal to evolutionary bio-zones. Please pray for this project, which may open a new means for understanding the Tonto Group and the Genesis Flood.

*William A. Hoesch, M.S. geology, is Research Assistant in Geology.

[Soldier4Christ]

 What If Evolution Were True?
by John Morris, Ph.D.*

What if all life evolved from a common ancestor by means of gradual changes as Darwin suggested? What evidence would we expect to find?

Certainly we would expect to find the fossilized remains of the myriads of ancestral creatures which lived and died over the millenia. At least some of the intermediate forms would have been fossilized. Remains of many varieties of present creatures have been found, including some extinct varieties, but the true in-between forms bridging gaps still elude us. Abundant soft-bodied remains have been found, so the conditions for preservation would always somewhere have existed. Why can't we find those important fossils which document evolution?

We might also expect to find evolution still occurring today. Why does it seem to have stopped? Geologists think the present time is marked by rapid change; environments are changing, so why are living things not changing? They are unquestionably adapting, but this is not by acquiring new genetic traits as required by evolution. Mutations frequently occur, which damage existing genes, some more than others, but nowhere do we observe new genetic information arise by random mutation. Evolution of any basic type into another would require millions of innovative, helpful mutations which add new information to the genome, but these are nowhere to be seen. Instead of new types, we observe misfits and extinction, the opposite of evolution. Natural selection can only select between variants, it cannot act on its own to create novel types, and certainly is not an intelligent force driving innovation.

We would also expect to discover a universal trend in science which leads to more complexity in nature, paving the way for an increase in genetic content. Instead we discover the universal second law of science, which invariably points toward a degradation of quality in every duplication of information, such as in reproduction, and more randomness in every unguided process. The complexity of life forms is so unimaginably great that we must account for it, and random changes in the face of a universal law can hardly be the answer.

At the least we should find a mechanism for evolution firmly in place. Mutation and natural selection are often cited, but these are deteriorative and conservative, not innovative and thoughtful. A theory of everything which has no mechanism is a weak theory indeed.

Thus we do not find the expected evidence that evolution of basic types has taken place. Surely we can be excused for looking elsewhere.

*Dr. John D. Morris is the President of the Institute for Creation Research.

[Soldier4Christ]

 The Eyes of Creation
by Frank Sherwin, M.A.*

Squares or cubes in the living world are both rare and strange, but there are species of bacteria that are both flat and box-shaped. A deadly Australian species of sea jelly (jellyfish or medusae) called the sea wasp (Chironex fleckeri) has the fascinating shape of a cube. Remarkably, these creatures -- composed of 95% water -- have multiple sets of eyes, including some which are human-like. Why would these creatures -- supposedly so low on the evolutionary ladder -- not only have several different kinds of multi-purpose eyes, but one set that is human-like? To say this is unexpected is an understatement.

God has designed the box jellyfish with eyes that not only see obstacles, but are also able to detect the size and color of objects, as well as a set to detect light intensity. The eyes work in harmony giving the box jelly "an extreme fish-eye view, so it's watching almost the entire underwater world" according to evolutionist Anders Garm of Lund University in Sweden.1

Does Darwinism explain the form and function of jellyfish? To begin with, evolutionists do not know even the origin of jellyfish: "The origin of the |jellyfish| and ctenophores is obscure . . ."2 Furthermore, they "explain" the amazing eye design by stating, "Millions of years of evolution have produced more than ten different animal vision systems, each perfectly tailored to suit the needs of its owner."3 This is hardly a scientific explanation, of course. Creationists counter with, "God has designed more than ten different animal vision systems, each perfectly tailored to suit the needs of its owner." Each of the preceding statements is as scientific -- or religious -- as the other.

Clearly, random genetic mutations do not begin to explain the origin or function of these incredible eyes. Evolutionist Paul Ehrlich of Stanford states --

    Because mutations are random relative to need and because organisms generally fit well into their environments, mutations normally are either neutral or harmful; only very rarely are they helpful -- just as a random change made by poking a screwdriver into the guts of your computer will rarely improve its performance.4

The structure and physiology of eyes, no matter where they're found, are a window to creation!

   1. Thompson, A. 2007. Jellyfish have human-like eyes. LiveScience. April 2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17913669/.
   2. Hickman, Roberts, and Larson. 1997. Zoology. Dubuque, IA: WC Brown Publishers. p. 275.
   3. Than, K. 2005. Nature inspires design of new eyes. LiveScience. Nov. 18. http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/051118_animal_eyes.html.
   4. Ehrlich, P. 2000. Human natures. Washington, DC: Island Press. p. 21.

*Frank Sherwin is a zoologist and seminar speaker for ICR.

[Soldier4Christ]

DID GEOLOGIST DR IAN PLIMER SAY NO TO GLOBAL WARMING? Plimer is a geology
professor at Adelaide University and a well known Skeptic and long time enemy of
creationists. He is now highly sceptical of the idea that mankind is the cause
of warming, or that we can put a stop to it. "When meteorologists can change the
weather then we can start to think about humans changing climate" said Plimer in
an address to the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in Sydney on
11 April 2007. Plimer believes that main causes of climate change are variations
in solar activity and cosmic rays. When the sun is more active, there is less
cosmic radiation which leads to less cloud cover and the earth warms up. He has
also researched sources of carbon dioxide and claims "about 0.1 per cent of the
atmospheric carbon dioxide was due to human activity and much of the rest due to
little-understood geological phenomena." He points out there have been periods
in earth's history when atmospheric carbon dioxide has been much higher. Plimer
also claims that the breaking up of polar ice sheets can be explained by the
physics of flowing ice, not temperature changes. Plimer's assessment of the
current media interest is that "bad news was more fashionable now than good and
that people had an innate tendency to want to be a little frightened."

Plimer's claims are backed up by Timothy Patterson, a Canadian Professor of
Geology who has studied layers of sediment from the deep fjords on the West
Coast of Canada and compared the variation in fossil fish scales and diatoms
with changes in the sun's activity. He summarised his results in an article in
the Canadian Financial Post, 20 June 2007, as follows: "Specifically, we find a
very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the
sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year
"Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about
0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of
increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our
star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have
been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine
productivity we are observing. In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records,
we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known
regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that
match well with the sun's 75-90 year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess
Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is
seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia."   Patterson also
stated the earth's climate has changed more rapidly and by larger amounts than
the currently observed changes. He commented: "Climate stability has never been
a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes
continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures
were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder."


ED. COM. Timothy Patterson's summary of climate variation could have come
straight from Genesis 8:22 where God's accurate weather forecast to Noah is
recorded: "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night will never cease." Ian Plimer may be an
outspoken opponent of creationism, but for once Plimer has said something we
agree with. However, instead of Plimer scoffing at people for thinking they can
change the weather and for naturally wanting to be "a little frightened", we all
need to respect the Creator God who actually can change the weather, and we do
need to "Fear God, and give glory to him", for the hour of his judgment is
coming." We do need to both fear and worship the Creator "that made heaven, and
earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters."

[Soldier4Christ]

WAS GREENLAND REALLY GREEN? The answer is yes according to articles in BBC
News Online and Science vol. 317, p11, 6 July 2007. A group of Canadian,
Australian and European scientists have analysed DNA from organic fragments
found in sediment taken from ice cores drilled in south central Greenland and on
the summit of the Greenland ice sheet. The DNA was used to identify what plants
and animals lived in Greenland in the past. The results showed "that the area
was populated by diverse forest made up of alders, spruce, pine and members of
the yew family. Living in the trees and on the forest floor was a wide variety
of insect life, including beetle, flies, spiders, butterflies and moths." The
regions where the cores were taken from are now covered with about 2km of ice.

ED. COM. A change from a temperate forest alive with butterflies and beetles to
a 2km thick layer of ice is quite a substantial alteration or climate change.
The discovery fits with other evidence that today's polar regions once had a
much milder climate, e.g. dinosaur fossils, coal and red soil in Antarctica. It
also fits with the oral history of the Vikings who explored the North Atlantic
and reported they settled in Greenland because it was green. Most of all, it
fits with Biblical history, which tells us the world started out "very good" but
suffered a significant catastrophe when God sent the world wide flood in Noah's
time. At the end of the flood, God told Noah hot and cold, summer and winter,
seedtime and harvest would continue to the end of the world. No one extreme on
the climate scale would be permanent for any location on earth. God's word will
prove always to be more reliable than today's global warming gurus.

[Soldier4Christ]

DOES FINDING A GIANT FOSSIL PENGUIN CHALLENGE CLIMATE THEORY? Reports in
Eureka Alert and Discovery News 25 June 2007, and ABC (Australia) News, 26 June
2007, that palaeontologists have found fossils of two previously unknown species
of penguin on the southern coast of Peru. One of the penguins, named "Icadyptes
salasi" was a giant compared with today's penguins. It stood about 5 feet tall
and had an enormous long spear-like beak. It is believed to be 36 million years
old. The other fossil is a similar size to living King Penguins and is believed
to be 42 million years old. The scientists who studied the fossils claim they
challenge the belief that penguins evolved in cold regions near Antarctica and
some moved northward after a time of global cooling. They also challenge the
theory that animals become smaller if they move to warmer climates because they
don't need to conserve heat. Julia Clarke of North Carolina State University,
who led the study, commented: "We tend to think of penguins as being
cold-adapted species, even the small penguins in equatorial regions today, but
the new fossils date back to one of the warmest periods in the last 65 million
years of Earth's history. The evidence indicates that penguins reached low
latitude regions more than 30 million years prior to our previous estimates."



ED. COM. These fossils are good evidence for the Biblical history of both
penguins and climate. The fact that the new fossils are recognisable as penguins
fits with the Genesis narrative of animals and birds being made fully formed
according to their kinds. It also reinforces the early chapters of Genesis which
describe the original planet as a "very good" world that was warm enough for
people to live without protective clothing and thrive on a diet of plants. This
means there would not have been vast tracts of ice and snow, such as the present
Antarctic regions where penguins huddle against icy wind, and nothing else
survives. Ice and snow are not mentioned in the Bible until the time of Job, who
lived several centuries after Noah's flood, after which the climate changed from
uniformly mild to one of extremes of heat and cold.

Sceptics have asked where penguins lived if the world was uniformly warm. This
is no problem, as some penguins live near the equator today. These new fossils
reinforce the belief that penguins can live in warm climates, given the
opportunity, but now they live in freezing conditions because some of them can
cope and very few other living things can. The fact that the giant forms are now
extinct indicates that there used to be more kinds of penguins than there are
now, indicating that the world has gone downhill since the beginning rather than
evolving more variety and complexity.

[Soldier4Christ]

HOW ACCURATE ARE DANGEROUS GLOBAL WARMING forecasts? Australian Uni Prof
reports they are "All up in the air".

Professor Bob Carter, a James Cook University geologist who studies ancient
environments and climate commented on the latest admission of weather guru Kevin
Trenberth, head of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research and one of
the advisory high priests of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC). Trenberth has had a distinguished career as a climate scientist with
interests in the use of computer General Circulation Models (GCMs), which are
the basis for most current public alarm about dangerous global warming. Carter
writes "In a remarkable contribution to Nature magazine's Climate Feedback blog,
Trenberth now concedes (writes Carter) that GCMs cannot predict future climate
and claims the IPCC is not in the business of climate prediction. Among other
things, Trenberth asserts ". . . there are no (climate) predictions by IPCC at
all. And there never have been". Instead, there are only "what if" projections
of future climate that correspond to certain emissions scenarios. According to
Trenberth, GCMs ". . . do not consider many things like the recovery of the
ozone layer, for instance, or observed trends in forcing agents". "None of the
models used by IPCC is initialised to the observed state and none of the climate
states in the models corresponds even remotely to the current observed climate.
"The state of the oceans, sea ice and soil moisture has no relationship to the
observed state at any recent time in any of the IPCC models. "There is neither
an El Nino sequence nor any Pacific Decadal Oscillation that replicates the
recent past; yet these are critical modes of variability that affect Pacific rim
countries and beyond . . . the starting climate state in several of the models
may depart significantly from the real climate owing to model errors" and
"regional climate change is impossible to deal with properly unless the models
are initialised".

GCMs "assume linearity" which "works for global forced variations, but it cannot
work for many aspects of climate, especially those related to the water cycle .
. . the science is not done because we do not have reliable or regional
predictions of climate". Strange that (says Carter) who could have sworn that I
heard somewhere that the science was supposed to be settled. One wonders whether
anyone has told the CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Research Organization)
that their much-vaunted regional climate models are worthless predictive tools.
Perhaps someone will ask the CSIRO to refund the amounts state governments and
others have paid for useless regional "climate forecasts"? In another
devastating blow to the credibility of climate forecasting, a lead author of the
IPCC Working Group 1 science report, Jim Renwick, recently admitted "climate
prediction is hard, half of the variability in the climate system is not
predictable, so we don't expect to do terrifically well". Renwick was responding
to an audit showing the climate forecasts issued by New Zealand's National
Institute of Water and Atmosphere were accurate only 48 per cent of the time. In
other words, one can do just as well by tossing a coin. Carter states, "These
various criticisms of climate modeling can be summed up in the following
statement - there is no predictive value in the current generation of computer
GCMs and therefore the alarmist IPCC statements about human-caused global
warming are unjustified."


ED.COM Australia is only one of many democratic countries in which both
Government and the Opposition parties profess to set climate policies based on
IPCC advice, as they legislate with gay abandon to impose inefficient,
ineffective and costly carbon trading or taxation system on their economies,
with the alleged aim of "stopping climate change". Is it time to tell the
leaders of such Governments that dangerous global warming has been called off?

[Soldier4Christ]

HURRICANE BLOWS OFF GLOBAL WARMING, according to a report in Science News
vol. 171, p358, 9 June 2007. Since the mid 1990's there has been an average of
four Category-3 or stronger hurricanes in the North Atlantic and Caribbean, and
many scientists and environmentalists have blamed this high number of strong
hurricanes on global warming. Hurricane formation and strength is influenced by
sea surface temperatures and wind shear. Wind shear is a phenomenon where
adjacent layers of air move at different speeds or in different directions.
Higher sea surface temperatures provide more energy for hurricanes, but strong
wind shear tends to break them up. Scientists at the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado have looked at records of
hurricanes and sea temperatures going back to 1730, and analysed marine
sediments and corals to build up a picture of how temperature and wind shear
affect the frequency and strength of hurricanes. Corals and sediments are
indicators of wind shear because if wind shear is high there is upwelling of
nutrient-rich water in the sea and more thunderstorms on land which increases
the amount of organic matter washed into the sea. The nutrients and organic
matter affect the growth rate of corals and the numbers of microscopic creatures
in the sediments. Researchers found wind shear seemed to be a stronger influence
on the number of strong hurricanes. Some periods of low hurricane activity
occurred with sea surface temperatures were higher than normal, but were marked
by strong wind shear. They also noted that there were "at least six lengthy
intervals since 1730" where hurricane activity was the same as today. Put into
the context of the last 180 years, it seems the recent period of intense
hurricanes is just a return to average frequency after a low period in the
1970's and 80's.

ED. COM. This study reminds us of the importance of history. Just as there have
been periods with more or fewer strong hurricanes, there have been periods in
earth's history when it has been hotter and colder than what we are currently
experiencing. This is exactly what God is recorded as forecasting in Genesis
8:22 when Noah was told that until God brings the earth to an end, there will be
alternating periods of heat and cold.